After “I Do” — A Checklist for Financial Matrimony

So, the wedding is in seventeen days, and most of our premarital preparations are done. I’ve been reading about what we must do financially after we officially tie the knot and I learned quite a bit. This is a checklist to remind myself what needs to be done in order to combine and protect our assets, and hopefully this list is helpful to you too.

• Add Spouse to List of Retirement Beneficiaries – On Desperate Housewives, Mr. McClusky forgot to add his wife to his pension plan as a beneficiary, and when he died, Mrs. McClusky kept his body in the freezer to keep collecting the pension. Don’t let this happen to your loved one. I will add the fubby to my 401k and Roth IRA accounts as a beneficiary. I don’t really count on getting Social Security, but a retired surviving spouse is automatically a beneficiary in that system.
• Draft a Will — We are still pretty young and don’t have much assets right now, but we do need to prepare for the inevitable. A good will should resolve a lot of conflicts within the family if a death occurs. As long as we write a good will and divide up the assets in percentages then it would need minimal maintenance as our estate grows.
• Give Spouse Information on Financial and Billing Accounts — I’m sure not all couples do this, but I will give the fubby information on all my financial accounts since he will be letting me invest his money. It’s only fair that he knows where it’s going. Also, he should give me the information on his accounts too so we can track our bills together.
• Get a Safety Deposit Box – I’ve been meaning to get a safety deposit box for important documents such as marriage certificate,stock certificates, and immigration documents. It also could be storage for precious metals and other things that we don’t want burned down.
• Get Additional Term Life Insurance — Term life insurance would be really important when we do have a child. We both have some life insurance from work, but they only pay for a couple times of our salary, which is not enough to take care of kids for 18 years if something happens to us.
• Add More to College Savings Plan — I already opened a 529 account for college savings and have been putting in about $30 a month. I really don’t even feel this deduction right now since it’s so small. Over two years the account now has about $1000 in it since the investments have been growing. I don’t yet have a kid, but the rate of $30 a month isn’t going to be enough in 20 years for a college education, so I plan to increase the contributions with my fubby.

There are also some things that I don’t plan to do right away:

• Change My Name – Chinese women generally don’t change their last names, and it’s not a good idea to go through this process while I am still a Chinese citizen. I would have mismatched names on my passport and green card, and that would be bad for traveling and identification purposes.
• Change Exemptions on W2 Form — Usually people tell you to change your exemption to 2 & married on the W2, but that might cause us to pay less taxes than we should. So I will have to wait and see how this year’s tax filing works out and fill in the appropriate amounts next year. I am not too pleased that we will be paying more taxes on the same income, but that’s entirely another topic.

That is all I can think of now, hopefully these items will be implemented after marriage.

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